In recent years there has been a spate of books and articles about the high cost of dying. Although there are various manners of interment dictated by religious, nationalistic and class differences, in a general way it may be said that a corpse is placed in a coffin or casket which is often padded and cloth lined on the inside and decorated outside. There are often handles which may be removeable and the cover may be capable of being opened in part or in its entirety for viewing the body, and/or a small door in the cover may be over a glass section or other transparency.
The sealed coffin is taken to the cemetery where it may be lowered into a grave which is lined with slabs of concrete or similar impervious material, constituting a crypt or vault for protecting the comparatively fragile coffin. The crypt or vault may be kept above ground usually in a family mausoleum or large public mausoleum where many crypts may be kept in tiers or other arrangements.
When a body decomposes (this process may be slowed or delayed by expensive embalming) it gives off liquids and gasses which must be controlled or the coffin and vault will leak malodorous gases into the atmosphere or mausoleum.
As is well known, the cost of burial land has become increasingly quite prohibitively expensive and particularly as a fairly large vault is required around the coffin, either under the ground or above, in a mausoleum, quite a lot of ground is required.
To decrease expenses, coffin-crypts have been proposed. It is also known to utilize crypts in a modular fashion to create a mausoleum.